School Lockdown Drills Are Keeping Britain’s Children in Perpetual Terror

 Here comes April, and with it the blossomed pear-tree and the chaffinch on the orchard bough – or so Robert Browning would have us believe. In my Sixth Form college, spring is announced rather differently: heralded not by birdsong but by the now-annual Lockdown Training Session, a grim modern-day equivalent of ‘Duck and Cover’ in which staff and students rehearse what to do when a deranged gunman comes knocking.

The session, delivered simultaneously by subject teachers during period two on a scintillatingly bright Tuesday morning, begins with a tannoy announcement from the Principal. Adopting the calm voice of an aircraft pilot whose plane has hit unexpected turbulence, he reassures students that what follows is a wholly preventative measure and that the need for actual lockdown is vanishingly small. Students’ faces are fixed with wry smiles in a show of performative nonchalance, yet their steely eyes betray an attentiveness I can only dream of in my ordinary lessons. Suddenly, I’m transported back to my own youth in the 1980s, where the threat of nuclear annihilation provided a humming backdrop to video rental stores, Sony Walkmans and New Romanticism.

Next comes the 30-second blast of the Lockdown Siren: a bleating screech punctuated by a relentless “Lockdown! Lockdown!” that gets teeth grating. It’s equal parts Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who and some forgotten public information film from the 1970s — theatrical, absurd and quietly chilling. All smiles vanish....<<<Read More>>>...